Top of the pile: the record that changed my life
“I was DJing with a friend at this place in Kings Cross, London one time. I was playing classic hip hop like Marley Marl and Pete Rock and old soul like Al Green, funk, little bits of reggae, whatever. But then my friend just dropped this record that I’d never heard before in my life called The Witch by The Sonics, and I was like ‘that is absolutely ridiculous!’. If we’re talking about ‘no polish’, they didn’t even have a duster in their house, man! It was just filth, you know, and immediately I realised if we could marry the two – this hip hop, soul thing and this totally raw garage – we’d be onto something. It was definitely a monumental moment in terms of where we are at today. The Sonics were just straight down the line, no messing around.”
At the movies with Jim Jarmusch
“Jarmusch really breathes new life into old things. His films, like Ghost Dog, use these anachronisms like the samurai and these old mafia wiseguys to create something totally original and different. I think there’s a very similar aesthetic between what he does and what we do. It’s about bending the rules and moving between old and new. That’s the great thing about the blues – you can always go back and pump some new life into it.”
Horror in the heart: movies put the scare on our sound
“We’ve always loved horror! That’s where our name The Heavy comes from, those old horror and disaster movies from the ’70s. Stuff like The Brood, The Maniac, The Shining, which were all just blunt and to-the-point. Horror has played a huge part in shaping our sound, especially B and C-list horror. Again, no polish needed!”
The Heavy’s ragged edges
“We look more to the raw; we’re just not into clean at all. Whatever influences we are inspired by, we try and bring out the dirtiest of it. When things are raw, you capture the absolute emotion and that’s what we try to do. As soon as you make things shiny, you lose the soul.”
The House that Dirt Built is available now via Counter/Inertia Visit: theheavy.co.uk
